Patterico's Pontifications

10/30/2008

For Those Who Have Followed the Perdigao Saga . . .

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 9:06 pm



. . . it looks like he will be pleading guilty tomorrow.

Judicial Races: Recommendations

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:54 pm



A number of people have asked me for my input on local judicial races.

The short answer is: you should vote for the prosecutors in every race.

The long answer is in the extended entry.

This post is, for the most part, merely a more focused rehash of my recommendations for the last election. Five of those races resulted in a runoff. In four of those races, I am merely rehashing my previous recommendations; in the other, I am making a new recommendation where I couldn’t decide before.

Here are the recommendations:

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Obama’s Transition Team Up and Running

Filed under: 2008 Election — DRJ @ 8:07 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Hot Air links a Chicago Sun-Times report that Obama has been raising money for his transition via the “Obama Transition Project” and now the AP reports the Obama campaign has approached Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel to serve as White House Chief of Staff.

Emanuel is known for his intensity as profiled in this Rolling Stone article entitled “The Enforcer”:

“Friends and enemies agree that the key to Emanuel’s success is his legendary intensity. There’s the story about the time he sent a rotting fish to a pollster who had angered him. There’s the story about how his right middle finger was blown off by a Syrian tank when he was in the Israeli army. And there’s the story of how, the night after Clinton was elected, Emanuel was so angry at the president’s enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting “Dead! . . . Dead! . . . Dead!” and plunging the knife into the table after every name. “When he was done, the table looked like a lunar landscape,” one campaign veteran recalls. “It was like something out of The Godfather. But that’s Rahm for you.”

Of the three stories, only the second is a myth — Emanuel lost the finger to a meat slicer as a teenager and never served in the Israeli army. But it’s a measure of his considerable reputation as the enforcer in Clinton’s White House that so many people believe it to be true. You don’t earn the nickname “Rahmbo” being timid.”

So much for bipartisanship. It sounds like Obama’s idea of change is to replace Washington business-as-usual with Chicago business-as-usual.

— DRJ

Excellent Video About Obama

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:59 pm



Via steve comes this very effective video about some of the shortcomings of Barack Obama:

John Murtha’s Plea

Filed under: 2008 Election — DRJ @ 6:57 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

From the Instapundit:

“MURTHA’S IN TROUBLE: Veteran Democratic Rep. John Murtha (Pa.) has sent out a last-minute plea for $1 million to save his hotly contested seat, endangered by his own remarks describing his district as racist.

If you’d like to help his opponent, the website is here.”

Heh. I second Prof. Reynolds’ notion that helping Murtha’s opponent, retired Army Lt. Col. Bill Russell, is a good choice.

— DRJ

The MSM Is Busy Filling In Their Electoral Maps Based On State-By-State Polling That, If Accurate, Means the National Tracking Polls Are Off Nearly Double

Filed under: 2008 Election — WLS @ 6:02 pm



[Posted by WLS Shipwrecked]

I continue to be fascinated by the issue of whether Obama will prevail by a large enough nationwide vote total to overcome the advantages of small states in the Electoral College, when most of those small states will be going for McCain — while all but one of the most populous states will go for Obama.

Today I’m trying to reconcile nationwide tracking polls that show a 4-5 point race, with the projections of a blowout in the electoral college, in light of the inherent advantage that small states have over large states.

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Shocking Headline of the Day

Filed under: 2008 Election — DRJ @ 12:40 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

From the Houston Chronicle:

    “Poll finds 23% of Texans think Obama is Muslim”

The poll was conducted by the University of Texas Department of Government. By Texas’ standards, UT may be the closest we Texans have to a bastion of liberalism.

Now here’s the rest of the story:

  • The poll was conducted solely on the internet.
  • One-third of the respondents are 18-34 years old, but only 20% of the voters are in that age bracket.
  • The survey’s respondents were 31% Hispanic but only 16-17% of voter turnout is Hispanic.
  • The survey had 49% of its respondents with only a high school education or less, which is not representative of Texas polls.
  • The results were roughly even in terms of partisanship even though Texas is eight points more Republican than Democrat.
  • Other than that, this survey looks fine.

    — DRJ

    L.A. Times on Voter Fraud

    Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:56 am



    The L.A. Times runs an article titled Vote watchdogs warn of troubles on election day:

    Counting down to an election day expected to draw a record-shattering turnout, voting-rights watchdogs are sounding the alarm that a repeat of the Florida fiasco of 2000 could occur in any of a dozen battleground states.

    The watchdogs are barking madly about the purging of voter rolls.

    There’s one sort of trouble not mentioned in the article. Yet I believe it’s the biggest problem of all.

    The discussion Armed Liberal and I were having the other night — which led to that hypothetical we posed to readers yesterday — revolved around voter fraud and how to prevent it. Armed Liberal identified several different ways in which voter fraud can take place. My assertion was that there is one voter fraud problem so massive that it makes all the other possible problems seem trivial. The discussion then turned to how it can be prevented — and whether the possible fixes are too draconian for Americans to accept. (I say they aren’t.)

    But maybe I’m wrong about the nature of the problem. So instead of my telling you what I think it is, let me throw open the floor to discussion, without prejudicing you any further.

    What do you think is the single greatest source of voter fraud in this country?

    “He is Coming”

    Filed under: 2008 Election,Current Events,Politics — Jack Dunphy @ 12:07 am



    [Guest post by Jack Dunphy]

    My Pajamas Media column on LAPD chief William Bratton’s endorsement of Barack Obama drew some interesting comments, not least of which was one from someone who posted under the sobriquet Truth First:

    Make no mistake: It is Barack Obama’s destiny to be President of the United States. Justice demands it. The Truth demands it. The World demands it.

    Oppressed peoples throughout the world are looking to Obama for hope. For Justice. For an end to war. For America to stop attacking the world and for it to start being a just and peaceful member of the community of nations.

    If for some reason he is not elected then there will be a cry of outrage so great that America and all its racist institutions will shake and collapse. It will be the end of America and God will damn it for its final and most terrible sin.

    Truth First included a link to his blog site, on which he identifies himself as a worker of unspecified duties in the Obama campaign. He describes a recent conversation he had with Senator Obama which, if true, is revealing. An excerpt:

    It has been six months since I joined the Obama campaign. Sometimes it feels like lifetime ago. So much has happened. There has been a great deal of traveling and I’ve seen more of America than I have ever cared to see. I am still astounded by how large this backwards and flawed nation is. I express this to Senator Obama.

    “I understand. Believe me, I feel the same way.” Obama pauses and puts down the water bottle and rubs his eyes with both hands. “There is so much that I must do and sometimes I don’t know if eight years will be enough.”

    The McCain people continue to claim Obama is a Socialist or that he will take money from plumbers. “They do not understand,” Obama says. “I wish sometimes I could just grab one of them by the shoulders and just yell, ‘wake up and get with the program!’”.

    “Some people get it, a lot of them actually. They know what I must do. America is broken. Look at the rallies.” And he’s right. I don’t believe any of his appearances this week attracted less than 10,000 people.

    “We have walked down a long path and I don’t mean just you and me. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, W. E. B. Dubois, they all started the path and I can finish it”.

    I tell Obama the legend of Amon-Ra, a God of ancient Egypt who attains the characteristics of all other gods. “Sometimes you remind me of him,” I tell him.

    Obama smiles and looks out the window. Outside is America; a land that needs a wise and just leader.

    He is coming.

    Gosh, and I thought he was just another hack pol from Chicago. If Obama is victorious next Tuesday, I suppose I can look forward to a period of re-education until I can be brought to accept his divinity. All hail our Maximum Leader!

    –Jack Dunphy

    UPDATE: It appears commenter Grvm (#28) is correct: It’s a spoof, and a good one. See here.


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